As if the “R2 wave” didn’t offer enough to get excited about, server licensing rights have been expanded so that Hyper-V role and Hyper-V Manager console are now included with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials.

Where previous versions of Windows Server Essentials required customers to get a hypervisor separately, this version allows customers to install an instance of Essentials on their physical server to run the Hyper-V role, and a second instance of Essentials as a virtual machine (VM) on that same server with all the Essentials Experience roles and features, according to a post on The Windows Server Essentials and Small Business Server Blog.

The post also explains the particulars of using virtual instances of Windows Server around license assignment (for example, what’s needed when you use the Live Migration or HyperâV Replica feature to move VMs from one Hyper-V host to another), and discusses the new Windows Server Essentials Experience role – an option available in the Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2012 R2.